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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Stickiness

I'm stuck!  Ever felt stuck? 

I've been stuck in my Eating Disorder and I've been stuck in my recovery.  In the past, I resisted it, hate it, yell and scream about it to others as well as yell and scream AT it or I can even push through it, avoid it, distract myself from it or get obsessed about it.  I can even accept it.  And, believe me I have done all of these things.  Only to end up feeling stickier.  I just feel like Braer Rabbit! But I'm realizing that it's less important to me to try and unstick myself as it is how I sit WITH the stickiness.   In other words, I am finding that what feels better is to merely allow myself to be sticky.  I don't think this is the same as accepting it.  Rather, it is an opening up of myself to the experience of "sticky".  I learned this concept from a very basic yet profound activity when I was in treatment.  I learned to "taste" my food again after many years of denying myself of this pleasure.  I would take the time to look, smell and then taste each bite as if each was a unique experience that would never occur again.  Later in my recovery, I broadened this lesson by having meals with my therapist and engaging in food challenges with my friends who were also in recovery from an Eating Disorder.  Over and over, I would experience this "stickiness." I remember it being challenging and I often HATED it, I fought it.  But, in time, I learned to enjoy the experience of being "sticky" with food. 

I no longer experience this sense of stickiness when interacting with food, but believe me, I experience it in life over and over again.  I often feel I can't move forward. I have the desire, I have the yearning but I am STUCK.  Stuck by and within a place in life, by circumstances, and by situations that are mostly outside my control.  And, again, the concept of merely accepting it sounds too simple and almost dismissive.  Instead, I imagine myself sitting beside the stickiness as if it is within me at all but a state of being.  Almost as if it is an alien I do not know anything about.  Because, in reality, it may not be me at all.  I have to ask myself  "Who am I to be so VAIN!" So, instead, I try to be-friend this stickiness.  I try to be gentle with it and listen to it, be curious about it.  Or if that's too difficult, I merely just sit with it.  I am patient with it and I am patient with myself as I am being patient with it!  And, amazingly enough, I often find that it is not as uncomfortable as I thought it was.  It is not as threatening.  It is not as awful. 

Throughout my recovery and throughout my life, I am learning that I have little control over most things, including (ironically enough) how quickly I recover.  But, though I have little control, I do have much impact. My impact comes from how I care for myself and how I care for life in general.  I am learning that when I feel stuck it is because I WANT more.  And that is good....to a degree.  But, as my mother so frequently reminded me as I was growing up, I do not ALWAYS get what I want.  However, I want it none the less and I get angry that I can 't have it. Then I begin to resent IT or I resent the world or the universe or God or whatever is in front of me at the moment. When this happens, I soon feel helpless to change and then I get STUCK. But, I can, on the other hand, choose to be open and willing. I can invite this stickiness to stick with me just as I can reassure the stickiness that I will stick with it.     

So, in my last thought for this blog....Maybe this stickiness isn't so bad. After all, isn't there such a thing as "sticky sweet."

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